movingtoportugal

There are some exciting days ahead for us in the coming days here in still very sunny Portugal. Some relatives of ours have purchased a property and will be joining us just ten miles down the road next week.

It will be wonderful to have family so close to us and I look forward to hosting lots of barbecues and showing everyone around our favourite beaches and restaurants!

This week has been a lot more settled than of late and it is great that the area has calmed down a bit after the hectic Algarve summer. Before the summer began, a couple of expat friends had said to us that the excitement of the summer rush would be fun for a few weeks and then become a little tiresome. It is fair to say they were spot on and we are glad that once again we can get near the pool and not have to queue for ages at supermarkets and roundabouts on the N125 road!

Cars - expensive in Portugal

Another benefit of the change is seasons is that the shortage (or complete absence) of available hire cars has now ended and we are excited about having access to a car again to resume our exploration of the area. We intend to buy a car at some point soon but, as you may know, cars in Portugal are ridiculously expensive and we are still building up to handing over a large chunk of money for something that would have cost us half as much in the UK!

Tonight we are off for a fish feast at one of our favourite restaurants, Vela 2 in Tavira – see review here for more details. After a busy week of work I look forward to my fresh fish binge and some beach time this weekend.

Tomorrow my wife and I have been together for eleven wonderful years so we have much to celebrate in the next couple of days while we look forward to the arrival of some of our family, at the start of their own moving to Portugal adventure.

That’s about it by way of an update – have a great weekend!

Technorati Tags: algarve restaurant, busy summer, cars in portugal, moving to portugal, vela 2 tavira

We had a bit of an unsettled week here in Portugal last week, followed by a very enjoyable weekend.

As any long term readers of the blog will know, every now and then we get “wobbly days” with regard to being here – something that most expats we speak to can relate to. We had a few last week.

Learning Portuguese - we are trying!

We have made a real effort to learn some Portuguese. Maybe it is just because it was the end of the tourist season, but despite how well we pronounced things, practically everyone we interacted with last week insisted on speaking back to us in slow, condescending English.

This language based game usually entertains us. We call it “the fight.” We speak Portuguese, the Portuguese person speaks English and everyone sticks to their guns until eventually one party gives in. If we end the conversation speaking Portuguese it is a victory for us. If we give in and speak English then we lose.

I say it usually entertains us. Last week it happened so much it was frustrating. It made us think that even years down the line we are still going to be seen by strangers as stupid English people, which doesn’t seem fair when we are making an effort to learn the language.

We had one triumph last week though, when speaking Portuguese with a local lawyer. He complimented us on our Portuguese and was very surprised we had only been here ten months, even asking whether we had previously lived in Brazil or Spain.

He then said something that gets to the heart of the whole issue: “geralmente o Inglês, não tente aprender,” which means “generally the English do not try to learn.”

So, basically, we will continue to be tarred with the stupid brush because of the “two large beers please,” crowd who come here on holiday and don’t even attempt a “bom dia “ or “obrigada.” Irritating to say the least.

Anyway, after an annoying week we had a very pleasant weekend with lots of cooking and sunshine and a Saturday on Montegordo beach with some great waves – the best kind that knock you over if you don’t pay attention.

We followed this with a Chinese meal which has become a treat now due to the nearest good Chinese being 10 miles away – see Chinese Restaurants in Montegordo over at Food and Wine Portugal for details!

We then had one of those Sundays that just feels perfect. A lie in, Sunday papers in the sunshine, followed by roast chicken and ‘Friends” DVDs. This was exactly the kind of Sunday we

Chinese in Montegordo

used to have when we lived in London and we hadn’t realised how much we missed it.

In the ten months we have been here we have been charging towards the beach every Sunday or exploring some new part of the local area. We failed to realise that our perfect Sunday had been born of extensive research into what we actually wanted to do.

As we were living in a new country, our brains tricked us into thinking we should do something new on a Sunday, when there was in fact nothing wrong with what we always used to do. True, we now have sunshine and access to a pool, which can be incorporated into our Sunday routine, but other than that we plan to revert to what our Sundays always used to be like. No more rushing around – it is not what Sundays are for!

So, having discussed one old habit we are reinstating, I guess I have to address another habit…..giving up smoking. Last week was partially successful.

My electronic cigarette turned out to give me migraines, leading to a small relapse. However, I am now down to just three cigarettes per day, which is a huge improvement. I am still rather annoyed with myself but I have managed to reduce my consumption by 86% which isn’t bad at all.

I am awaiting a book from Amazon called Stop Smoking, Stay Cool: A Dedicated Smoker’s Guide to Not Smoking

This book has worked for several people who have not responded well to some of the more popular giving up smoking methods and appeals to me as someone who doesn’t particularly like being told what to do. Hopefully it will arrive this week – I will let you know how I get on.

Have a good week

Technorati Tags: chinese food montegordo, giving up smoking, lazy sunday, learning Portuguese, montegordo, Moving abroad, old habits

My wife and I are both committed water-babies and we love being so close to the ocean. If, in years to come, we end up anywhere other than Portugal, I will make sure we don’t end up somewhere land-locked again.

We are delighted that, even after swimming in the sea at least twice a week for several months, we never experience the same conditions. The colour of the sea and sky is different every

Beach - I Love the Sea

time and the size and style of the waves offers constant variety too.

You get still days when the water is crystal clear and tinged with shades of green – sometimes on these days fish brush your legs as you paddle around in the shallows. You get days when gentle waves keep you bobbing around contentedly in the sun – ideal for spending hours sitting on something inflatable.

Days like last Saturday are probably my favourite – days when huge waves can knock you off your feet as you get into the water and it’s a very pleasant work-out just endeavouring to stay still – every wave giving you the choice: swim under it, swim over it, or let it take you towards the shore, ready to be knocked over by the next one.

Hours spent in a glorious sunny state of fear-tinged excitement – activity that costs nothing and is healthy too (or at least until you start on the caiprinhas at the beach bar!)

Sometimes guests ask us if we think one day we’ll get bored with days on the beach. I don’t think we will. Sometimes we take a Frisbee, sometimes a wake-board, sometimes an Ipod and other days we just give in and buy an English newspaper to read! Each of these beach days feel different to us, and that’s before we even start on picnics, walks and hiring kayaks.

No, I don’t think I will ever get bored of the beach..and if I do, I’ll go to a different one

Image Credit: photographar

Technorati Tags: beach. algarve beach, portugal beach, sea

Once again some visitors have left and home feels strangely empty – we are, however, getting a bit more used to the transition!

This time we had some family over and spent a wonderful week doing the tourist bit in the local area.

As well as our trip to Zoomarine, which I wrote about in a previous post, we have visited beaches, stopped at numerous cafes and restaurants for sustenance and experimented with two new modes of transport….

A pedalo on the sea, complete with an inbuilt slide, was tremendous fun and a whole lot less straightforward than you would expect! When you take into account waves, currents and everything being extremely slippery, it is a wonder that we returned from the experience with only minor injuries – all completely worth it for being able to splash into the sea in heat.

Even more exciting was our experience on the electric mopeds they currently have for rent on the seafront at Cabanas. These machines have pedals so are ridden like a bike but also

Electric Moped - fun

have an electric motor and a couple of compartments to store shopping. As they are classified as bikes, you are allowed to ride them on the Ecovia cycle routes, keeping you away from the Portuguese traffic.

This is a fantastic and very eco-friendly means of transport and ideal for little trips to the local shops where we live…we are looking into the possibilities of getting two of our own and look forward to a more extended trial of the bikes having booked a half-day on them later in the week.

Pego Do Inferno

As always it made us appreciate where we live all the more having people to share it with us – a particular highlight being the beautiful waterfall of Pego Do Inferno, where we all swam in the cool water, and a couple of our number worked up the courage to swing from a rope by the waterfall into the water below. This magical place is slightly off the tourist track and so good to visit in the summer.

We have certainly noticed it is VERY busy around these parts now – some beaches, such as Montegordo and Praia Verde are ludicrously busy, and when we visited the latter yesterday we had to queue long enough to get out of the car park to warrant a game of “I-Spy” in the car! We have identified one local beach that gets largely bypassed by the worst of the crowds, and I’m afraid I am unwilling to disclose which one it is

So, once again, back to work and reality after sharing another holiday with some more visitors – time to get the house clean and tidy, go and see how much beer is left in the fridge, and look forward to the next arrivals. Happy days.

Technorati Tags: ecovia algarve, electric moped, holidays, pego do inferno, praia verde, swimming, swimming in waterfall

Algarve Banana Tree

As promised last week, today we have a guest post from a good friend who visited us last week. Our guest plans to move abroad some day so her visit was as much a fact-finding trip as a holiday – weighing up whether or not Portugal is somewhere she may one day like to live.

As someone who has been thinking about leaving the UK for a while now, going to see friends who have made that big leap and moved to Portugal was a great place to start. Having people who can show you some of Portugal’s best hotspots was definitely rewarding. I did look at the week as a holiday but at the same time everything I did made me ask myself, could I do this all year round?

Once I got to my friends’ place, the fact that it looked like a holiday apartment was nothing new but seeing their photos and home comforts scattered around made me realise that they actually do live here now and this is life for them.

They were telling me all the things that they had been doing and all the places I could visit while I was there as we sat on the balcony until midnight. The enthusiasm in their voices made me realise that not only were they very happy to be here but also excited about sharing this new experience with me, which made me just as excited as they were.

On the first day, as I stepped out onto the balcony, the first thing that hit me wasn’t the heat, as you might expect, but the brightness. Not a cloud in the sky (which was a brilliant blue) and the glare from the white buildings around me made me think twice before opening the blinds without sunglasses again. I did think to myself in the first two days could I live with this heat and glare? But after those two days it was not a problem and as I write this blog back in London under a sky covered in cloud, there isn’t anything I miss more.

In one week we managed to visit five different beaches, all with their own individual pros. We swam in the sea and even that was a different experience at each beach, whether it was the

Approaching Isla de Tavira

change in the water temperature or just the way the waves moved depending on the tide. The sand was different each time too and the journeys getting to the beaches were just as unique. We walked, we got onto boats and for one, we got a small train which took us across a nature reserve and stopped just at the sand. By the end of the trip it seemed like I’d been on several different holidays at once and this was one of my favourite things about Portugal.

Although my friends hardly had a bad word to say about leaving London, I did think to myself while I was here: would I miss this and would I miss that? As my friends said, friends and family are a given but you make new friends wherever you go and ones that matter will always want to come to visit, even from the UK. I have to admit that most of the people we met, whether English, Portuguese or Spanish, were so friendly and after a few years living in London this was a delight to me.

The choice in the supermarket is much more exciting abroad as there is so much you haven’t tried, while so much of things you already know and love are available too. On the last night we were there, we went for a Chinese and I thought to myself, Chinese in Portugal? But it was the nicest Chinese I’ve ever eaten and with a large choice of restaurants and bars, I was never going to miss the food from back home.

Algarve Summer Sky

One night when we slightly over did it and needed a bit of a break the next day: we watched DVDs and TV and if it weren’t for the Portuguese sub-titles I would have thought I was resting in the comfort of my own home. The Portuguese subtitles, although easy to ignore, do help you pick up a lot of the language without even noticing and that is only another good thing!

All in all, I am still keen to leave the UK and at present, Portugal is a very high contender for the top spot of places to go. It definitely helps that if you already have good friends there that will make you feel welcome, it makes it easy for me to go back anytime I need to see more and experience as much as I can before making that big decision! Portugal for me was 10/10.

Technorati Tags: algarve beaches, algarve summer, guest post, moving to portugal

As we look forward to another hot and sunny weekend, I thought I would write a quick post about the Algarve in the summer.

Busy Beaches

We have never been here in July or August before, so the last couple of weeks have been something of an eye-opener.  Trips to anywhere west of Faro are off the menu until September, after our last trip to Praia De Rocha since the tourists descended en masse resulted us using the word “hellhole” without any hint of irony.

We are lucky to live at the quieter end of the Algarve where, although the holiday-makers are very much in evidence, the character of the area seems to survive, and the bulk of the boozy teenagers are kept contained in certain bars!

At the moment, this new summer vibe is pleasing, and the holiday mood rubs off on us in a good way (except for when there’s no room around the pool downstairs!)

It is also good that our ability to speak some Portuguese separates us out from the tourists, and we are quite enjoying showing off our language skills in the butchers and fishmongers!

Weather wise – no complaints here! We had been a little concerned it may be too hot for us, and it may well get hotter in the coming weeks, but so far we seem to be adjusting very well to temperatures in the low to mid 30s every single day. It is surprising how quickly you get used to it – to the extent that if it is 35C one day and drops to 31C the day after you almost wish it was slightly warmer.

The nights are not so straightforward, and we have had some where it hasn’t dropped below 25C in the night and is back to 32C by 9am. These nights, it can be tricky to remain asleep without keeping the air-conditioning on constantly, which isn’t good for the skin or the wallet! All in all though, we are loving this new climate and suspect that by the autumn we will be joining the Portuguese in their jackets and scarves and looking strangely at visitors wearing flip-flops when it’s “only” 23C!

The jury’s out as to whether we will continue to enjoy this complete change of pace and invasion of our new local area – either way you can be sure I will let you know.

Have a lovely weekend.

Photo Credit: Planax

Technorati Tags: algarve beaches, algarve in summer, holidays, moving to portugal, portugal holidays

Having friends come to visit us here in Portugal is fantastic, especially at this time of year when every day is blazing hot and we are starting to forget what clouds are like, let alone rain.

What isn’t so fantastic is when they have to go home. When people share our new home with us it makes the place full of life, especially as these people are on holiday and bring that happy-holidays vibe with them. When they leave, the house feels oddly empty for a couple of days – and it never helps that there is the inevitable pile of work to catch up on – it tends to go on the back-burner in favour of far more important things – long lunches, swimming and exploring different beaches.

My wife and I have always been very sentimental and are not good at dealing with that “last day of holiday” feeling. We didn’t realise when we moved here was that we would experience that sad feeling second-hand when each of our guests leave!

We are approaching another concentrated period of visits over the next

Sunset Boat Back From Isla de Tavira

couple of months (only two days, in fact, until the next arrival,) so perhaps by the end of September we may have a slightly different take on this!

The guest who has just left is interested in a possible move abroad in the future, so we obviously did all we could to sell the lifestyle to her. We have asked her to produce a guest post telling readers of this blog of her experiences in Portugal so expect to see that soon.

Summer is well and truly here now, and not a day goes by without a minor panic about how big our next electricity bill will be with the air conditioning on all the time. The Algarve is like a completely different place to even just two weeks ago – every major coastal town is like a party-zone every night of the week. It is quite exciting at the moment to see the contrast but I’m sure it won’t be long before we want all the tourists to go home and give us back our little piece of paradise.

Until then though, we are loving our first Portuguese summer, having an apartment that smells of sun cream and even the constant dry and stingy skin from all the time we are spending in the sea. It’s all rather good.

Technorati Tags: beach life, living abroad, post holiday blues, summer

Monday mornings are a lot easier to deal with when the sun floods through the curtains as soon as we pull up the shutters. I am very thankful that I really can’t find a lot to complain

Montegordo - just before sunset

about right now, and yesterday as I sat on the beach, I started thinking about all the great times we have had this month. It’s time for a list! Here are ten fabulous things that we enjoyed in April:

1. Spending three hours (yesterday) bobbing around in an over-sized rubber ring in a calm and surprisingly warm Atlantic Ocean.

2. Learning how to prepare and cook fresh squid.

3. Watching fish swimming in the top of the waves at Barrill beach on the Isla De Tavira.

4. Sharing our new home with several of our nearest and dearest.

5. Going to the beach with our friend’s eight month old baby and introducing him to sand.

6. Mastering the use of our new barbeque, with the exception of learning how to stop having to clean it being a HUGE chore.

7. Playing boule on the beach. (Hmm, a bit of a beach theme emerging here…)

8. Driving around somewhere that now truly feels like home with loud, sunny music playing.

9. Sitting outside drinking cheap wine on the first of the really barmy, warm evenings.

10. Exploring some more of Portugal (some the Alentejo and the area around Coimbra – more to follow on the blog at some point!)

It is interesting, when I read back over the list, that none of these things really cost money. Luther Vandross and Janet Jackson were spot on: the best things in life ARE free!

In the interests of balance, as always, here are a few less fabulous things from this month!

1. Discovering that Spain, as well as the UK, must have its share of noisy chavs, demonstrated by the group of children throwing wood at each other on Montegordo beach while their tattooed parents shouted at them. Thankfully this was an isolated example!

2. Coming to the realisation that having to go back to the UK every few months to work is never going to stop being rather depressing.

3. Trying to sleep when mosquitoes are determined to make noisy dives at your ears.

4. Finding out that even though Portugal is a far more friendly country than the UK, there are still a few people in customer facing jobs who need to learn to smile. Chinese restaurant on Montegordo seafront, I am thinking of you

That’s it for today. Have a look at my other blog, www.foodandwineportugal.com for five fabulous foods from this month!

Technorati Tags: 10 things, barril, bbq, best things in life are free, boule, chavs, isla de tavira, janet jackson, luther vandross, montegordo, moving to portugal, portugal, squid, ten things

It is a lot easier to get out of bed in the mornings now, when the sun streams through the window almost every morning as soon as we pull up the shutters. It’s not just us either – everyone around from the locals to the tourists seem to be giving off far more positive vibes, and right now this coastal region of Portugal is a more than pleasant place to be!

Budget bikes!

Our new solar-powered energy has found us walking and exercising a lot more and last week we decided the time had come to purchase some bicycles. We had noticed an offer in our local supermarket – some basic bikes for the bargain price of 50 euros each, and my wife was especially excited – not about getting the bike itself so much but because hers was purple and had room for a basket on the front!

It doesn’t seem to be publicised very much but there is now a route of cycle paths called the Ecovia, which stretch the full width of the Algarve from Sagres to Vila Real De Santo Antonio. These routes are marked with signs and blue arrows and are primarily on dedicated cycle paths or traffic-calmed roads. It is not perfect – occasionally it becomes unclear where the route goes and you have to use an element of guesswork to find the next blue arrow, but for us that all adds to the fun.

Over the weekend, we tried two stretches of the route – the first a short one there and back between Cabanas, Conceicao and Tavira, and the second a longer ride from Cabanas to Manta Rota and back.

The Tavira route takes you over fields and meadows, then into the Ria Formosa Natural Park and across the salt pans. This is a mainly flat route – perfect for our first day on the bikes. This route is gorgeous at this time of year as the meadows are covered in yellow flowers as far as the eye can see. We are told there is not usually such an abundance of these flowers but the extreme wet weather we had followed by this hot sun has made for a stunning landscape.

Coming back from Tavira approaching dusk, the flowers start to close, turning the yellow fields into yellowy green fields. The only downside to this sun-down journey being that marshy ground + dusk = hordes of mosquitoes, and a wife with a right arm which is currently double the size of the left after an allergic reaction!

Our Sunday ride was much longer and more strenuous for two unfit people with a fondness for food and wine, especially with hot sun beating down. The track seems to disappear in Conceicao for a little while, but using a map we were able to guess the route and after a wiggle through Conceicao village and over the railway line we again found the blue arrows.

This ride took us across dirt tracks and small roads – through fields of olive trees and fragrant orange groves. The whole ride was a wonderful assault on the senses with heady scents of orange blossom and the faint aniseed smell of wild fennel.

After the fields the route follows along the side of the treacherous N125 road, though not on the road itself, then cuts towards the coast on a dirt road between the Qunita De Ria and Quinta De Cima golf courses. I can only imagine how fabulous it must be to play on these luxurious courses – maintained to perfection and stunning to look at. Sadly my pitch and putt skill level and limited budget preclude me from being allowed anywhere near the first tee.

Boats at Fabrica

Once through this long dirt road with plenty of challenging hills, not helped by the rough road surface, the track then joins a normal but very quiet road, which runs towards the beautiful traditional hamlet of Cacela Velha. We took a small detour down to the tiny fishing village of Fabrica and had a soft drink and a rest. Whilst there I had to take a picture of the enchanting little boat shown in the centre of the picture in which it would be a challenge to accommodate one tiny person.

We pushed the bikes up the hill out of Fabrica and pressed on towards Cachela Velha, our original destination, past quintas with fruit trees and horses outside. We got to Cacela Velha pretty quickly and were amazed at the number of cars there compared to the few we saw when we visited off-season – this gave us a bit of a taste of just how busy the Algarve is going to be in a couple of months time!

The amount of people, along with the temptation of a very steep hill to rocket down on the way, persuaded us to press on to Manta Rota – a decision we came close to regretting as soon as we realised that what goes down must go up. This was a very hilly road which made us wish we exercised more often and ate less pies. The road down into Manta Rota was fine with a steady downward incline to cruise down, but all the while I was very conscious of the fact we would have to get back up it again later.

We arrived at Manta Rota, and after a refreshing paddle in the sea, we enjoyed a lunch of razor clam rice in a cafe. As suspected that steady downward incline into Manta Rota became a torturous mile long upward incline on the way back, not helped by a stomach full of seafood and the onset of heartburn!

It is fair to say the ride back wasn’t quite as fun as the ride there but our poor level of fitness is to blame for that. Wanting to look closely at the golf courses gave a good excuse for

Manta Rota beach

pushing my bike rather than riding it up several of the hills on the return journey! Despite the hard work, we still had that slightly sad feeling when we drove up our road, which made us feel a bit like young children having to put their bikes away at the end of a summer Sunday.

Once the aching limbs and sore bits have subsided we very much look forward to riding some more of the Ecovia – and I’m already starting to wonder about how long it would take to cover the whole distance with some nice overnight stops along the way…

Information on the Ecovia can be found at http://www.ecoviasalgarve.org/ – In Portuguese only.

Technorati Tags: bicycle, cabanas, conceicao, cycle route, cycling, cycling algarve, cycling in portugal, ecovia, manta rota, razorclam rice, tavira

Things are pretty good around these parts at the moment after our recent complications. So here’s a little list of the things currently making us smile.

1. SMILES FROM STRANGERS – It occurred to me yesterday that so many interactions with people here involve a smile and a “Bom Dia,” – from visiting a butcher or a market stall or walking past someone on a quiet beach, people here are generally rather pleasant to one another. This is a stark contrast to living in London where a lot of interactions involved scowling and the use of the word “wanker.”

2. WEATHER – Yes, I know I am like a broken record about this, but now the rain has stopped, the sun seems to shine for at least some of every day – it’s just so much easier to be cheerful.

3. OUR NEW APARTMENT – We would never have realised it while we were still in the UK, but we are far more suited to this modern place than we were to a leaky damp traditional townhouse – sunny days or cosy nights, we feel lucky to be here.

4. CABLE TV – After waiting four months and encountering lots of red-tape related hassle, we now have proper TV. We can finally watch the American trash everyone talks about on Facebook so we don’t have to feel left out, and we can also watch Portuguese kids TV to help us with the language…….AND it rewinds, records and all sorts!

5. THE SMELL OF ORANGE BLOSSOM – Everywhere at the moment and beautiful.

6. WALKING – Tavira was a very nice town to live in, but the ability to walk

Flowers spotted on a walk

for ten minutes and smell the sea is worth any number of extra shops and restaurants. We have also discovered several beautiful walks nearby – coastal, woodland, hills and a nature reserve all at our fingertips. We love it.

7. HEARING CRICKETS AND FROGS FROM THE TERRACE – (rather than traffic and chavs.)

8. BEER WITH A BURGER – Yes, I know I have a food and wine blog, but we all have a hankering for junk food occasionally, and I love the fact that Burger Ranch, the Portuguese equivalent of McDonalds, offers a glass of beer as part of a meal deal. Very civilised….and their burgers are freshly made and really rather good

9. BROADBAND – Proper broadband finally, rather than a pricey 3G stick – welcome back Youtube, Skype, Soundcloud, and luxuries like antivirus updates!

10. TIME – Yes, we do have less of it than we had hoped – we still always feel like we have too much to do, but at the same time we are listening to a lot of music and reading plenty of books – things we never had time for in England.

What about the bad?

I always like to give a fair contrast. At the moment things are generally positive, but in the interests of balance, here are a few things that have pissed me off in the last week.

1. MEAT – It may have a use by date a week away, but if you open it any more than a couple of days after you buy it here, there is a fair chance it will be off. Irritating, but possible to work around.

2. MOSQUITOES – Everywhere…..and they can smell the blood of an Englishman.

3. CERTAIN BRITS – “2 LARGE BEERS!” does not make for a respectful greeting in a cafe. Just learn “Ola” before you come here for crying out loud.